Stars & Empire 2: 10 More Galactic Tales (Stars & Empire Box Set Collection) Read online

  Finally, she stood. She worked her t’rosary stiffly, almost mechanically. She watched as surrounding stations and corridors emptied, leaving John Bucksmith alone, exposed, and unaware.

  As Esther slipped silently along the walls leading to Station #3, she coldly reviewed the steps she would have to take in order to calibrate and deploy the electromagnetic impulses that would stop John Bucksmith’s heart. He would die a quick, “natural” death. And she would leave his body behind for mourning. That was as close as Esther could come to convincing herself that she was doing the right thing.

  She had not counted on her nose betraying her.

  16.

  The minute she entered Station #3, she was hit with a strong undercurrent of olfactory shock: the weathered scent she knew as “campfire” permeated the entire room. Campfires were, of course, not strictly illegal on an outpost world like NuO, but it was difficult to think of situations in which wood, once obtained, would be burned merely for an evening’s entertainment. So the cold musk of embers, ashes, and stars she associated with the concept of “campfire” came instead from the old stories on the tablets and the fanciful flights of imagination indulged in by those producing various low-budget entertainment vids. That, and the spate of vaguely erotic dreams she’d been having lately. But she’d taken that scent to simply signify some odd combination of old-fashioned genderism and otherness—she hadn’t really thought that there were people alive on NuO who actually smelled that way.

  Apparently, John Bucksmith was one such person. Even as Esther raised her t’rosary, diverting the data streams from Station #3 and preparing to launch her killing command, she inhaled. And as John Bucksmith turned to raise his eyes towards hers, Sister Esther Dale lost what remained of her carefully constructed control and dropped her t’rosary back against her chest.

  “Can I help you?” a friendly, deep-chested voice asked.

  Esther just looked.

  “You look like you might be in the wrong place?” he continued.

  She did not know how it was possible, but there was no denying the fact that the man who stood before her, the man she knew to be John Bucksmith, was one and the same with the indistinct shadowy man who had been visiting her dreams, leaving traces of campfire smoke in her nostrils as she woke each morning. Esther had no time to reevaluate—this killing was coming apart, unraveling at the seams before she even began. She made a decision.

  “John Bucksmith,” she began, voice firm, low, and commanding. “You are in significant danger. I cannot give you details, but I can show you my credentials.” The t’rosary she held out towards him for identification was warm to the touch. She didn’t know what she would do if he didn’t recognize it, didn’t realize its significance. Luckily, his eyes widened slightly as he identified the t’rosary. He looked at her curiously, almost expectantly, as if he had been waiting for something like this to end his workday.

  Before he could speak, Esther motioned for silence. With a quick twist and tap, she used her t’rosary to scramble the Panopt signal temporarily. The effect extended to the data stream. Ganic, Esther swore. She had left the data stream running so as to maintain the illusion that John Bucksmith’s death was an unfortunate accident of poor health (although, looking at him, she was beginning to think that no one in their right mind would have believed his body to be on the verge of heart failure). But now, the interruption from the scrambling had caused the alarm to go off. Security would be here almost instantaneously. She had to get them out of there, now, before any record of their interaction could be made and archived.

  “Come with me if you want to live,” she commanded in what she hoped was a calm and authoritative voice. John Bucksmith, hesitated, but nodded, placed his hand in hers, and followed her without further hesitation as she raced across the station to the industrial-sized hatch. Esther threw the hatch open, and the two of them jumped down into the incinerator loop.

  17.

  At one point in her time down in the archives at the Re-Search, Esther had come across a tablet that contained the work of a cultural anthropologist whose life’s mission had been to trace the connections between tech and entertainment. Her thesis had been fairly blasphemous: that many of the innovations of the original Tech Emergence back on Earth had come about not through the divinely inspired acts of investigation undertaken at the convents, but rather through the decidedly banal impulse toward entertainment. As part of her argument, the anthropologist had discussed some of the earliest vids on record, and, curious, Esther had searched them out and even watched some of them. One of the ones she had enjoyed even in its amazingly inaccurate speculations had featured a scene in which the heroes had found themselves trapped in a rapidly shrinking waste receptacle aboard a planet-sized warship. Esther had been extremely amused to think that her ancestors had considered it even possible that anyone would use such a means of escape.

  She wasn’t laughing anymore as she and John Bucksmith slid down the track to the plant’s incinerator loop. Esther worked frenetically at her t’rosary, accessing schematics and overriding systems controls with a speed and control she had previously thought to be inaccessible to her. Focused inward, she scarcely noticed as her body tumbled to a stop. The ground beneath her was scorching, but she had not been incinerated, so she believed her manipulations of the tech that controlled the incinerator had been sufficient. Not that there was time to stay around and find out if she was wrong.

  John Bucksmith stared at her intently, waiting and watching to see what she would do. Esther approved. His ability to commit to a decision once made was commendable. He likely could have gone into the Brotherhood had he been so inclined.

  “Maintenance door should be to the left,” she said. John nodded once and they were off. She singed the fingertips of her left hand against the walls, trying to feel for the door. After that, they avoided touching the walls and resorted to staring intensely at the walls, trying to discern some sort of doorway. A faint, red glow caught her attention, and she held the ocular disk of her t’rosary up to her eye. Yes, there was the door, and there, to the right, an emergency access panel. Esther passed her t’rosary over the retina scanner, then made a few adjustments. Ocular disk still raised, she activated the scan. There was a slight hiss, and the sticking sound of a weathered plasticene seal breaking free. They were through.

  Once they were no longer in immediate danger of incineration, Esther stopped. “I feel I owe you an explanation,” she said. John raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “The short version is that your death has been ordered by the....” Here Esther faltered, unsure of what to say. She could not reveal the existence of the Shadow Network, for such an institution did not legally exist. John clearly knew that she was an initiate into the Mysteries, but what, exactly, this identification meant outside the context of the convent, she did not know. For the most part, the residents of Pendle treated the sisters as curious but essentially friendly custodians of the tech that made the life-blood of their existence flow. She was also fairly certain that the idea that anyone involved professionally with the Conglomerate Church should not be connected with ordered executions in any way. Which left her momentarily bereft of words.

  “Your death has been ordered,” she revised. “I am not at liberty to say by whom. But I am here to help you.”

  “Lucky me,” John said, his voice tinged with admiration.

  Flirting?! He’s flirting at a time like this? Why isn’t he breaking down into a hysterical, sobbing mess? Although it was extremely helpful that this John Bucksmith failed to follow the normal and predictable behaviors of those who did not practice the control taught at the convent, it was imbuing him with more mystery than she had time for. It was then she realized that what she had taken for admiration in his voice was much more likely to be the unexpressed strain of shock and stress. You vain idiot, she thought.

  “Unfortunately, there are only two options: Option A, I smuggle you into the convent a
nd essentially procure for you an entirely new life. New ID, new location—off-world, of course—new career. You may never contact your friends or family again, or you will be killed.”

  “And Option B?” he queried.

  “Option B, I place you back in the incineration loop, seal the exits, and re-engage the scheduled incineration.”

  He seemed to mull this over. “Okay,” he announced. “I’ll take Option A, if you don’t mind.”

  Esther was relieved. For all her talk of “options,” she was not certain she actually could go through with killing this man. It hadn’t worked the last time. “An appropriate choice, given the situation at hand,” she replied.

  “I’ve always wanted to get off-world, see the universe, that kind of thing,” John explained.

  “Really? I assume your familial obligations have held you back.”

  “No—I’m alone. Just never quite made the leap to leave. Perhaps this is simply the push I needed.”

  “I see, yes, well, that will simplify things given your current situation.”

  John turned to head out. Spinning through a fairly complex set of mental calculations designed to implement a plan she had, again, failed to think through in its entirety, Esther led them through the bowels of the plant.

  18.

  As the off-world transport spun lazily through the upper atmosphere, glinting in the sunlight as it flashed against the giant reddish moon in the eastern sky, Esther felt herself relax for the first time in what seemed like days. Given the fact that NuO’s days were only eighteen hours, this wasn’t as daunting as it might have been on someplace like Arizo with its ungainly forty-two-hour days. That was where she had arranged to transport John.

  Levi, she corrected herself. John Bucksmith had, for all intents and purposes, died in the lower tech sanctum under the minute sculpting efforts of several million very persistent micro techs. His time in the Re-Birth had been significant. His finger and voice-prints were reshaped, all exterior features modified, and his face had been completely changed, including an unfortunately painful retinal sculpting. Esther had had to turn aside during that section of the Re-Birth. The blood from John’s burst capillaries had been disturbingly reminiscent of other bloodied eyes she had recently closed.

  In the end, he emerged: Levi Sarig. His official biography indicated that he had lived on NuO for thirty-seven years, and, after a career as a systems manager at Pendle’s incineration loop, he had decided to take his skills off-world and settle on Arizo, a planet that happened to have many openings in such civil engineering markets. Esther had located a job for John in a small mining town far from that quadrant’s local convent.

  Even though she knew it was highly unlikely that any initiates from the convent would be paying attention to this job, let alone that they would decide to begin an investigation on the very ordinary migrant worker coming to fill the position, she was still somewhat apprehensive that at the last minute Levi Sarig would be denied a migrant tablet or that the off-world transport itself would develop a mysterious mechanical difficulties and be unexpectedly grounded.

  Protocol 43F’s assignation of a work history in the civil sector, specifically with incineration loop systems, had given Esther the odd sensation that, despite all of her precautions, manipulations, and downright scrubbing, someone, somewhere in the program management for Protocol 43F had seen her jump down that waste hatch in Station #3. Someone with an irksome sense of humor.

  But of course, Esther knew that it was impossible. By the time they left Plant #2, she had regained full control, and the t’rosary had scrubbed everything within five centimeters of John’s DNA. The only record of Esther’s return to the convent and expected descent into the tech sanctum was that of Esther herself. But still, the coincidence had set her on edge, and she was more relieved than she cared to admit at the off-world transport’s departure.

  And now, Sister Esther Dale AKA Beatrice Cortez was making her way up past the archives and the sisters of the Re-Search, past the clean rooms filled with her white-robed sisters, past the Scriptorium with its cubicle maze—up to the office of the Mother Superior. She had rehearsed what she would say: that John Bucksmith no longer existed on the face of this planet. In this way, she could maintain her vow of truth, although she was not certain how effective it would be in the long run.

  The Mother Superior looked pleased to see Esther. She took this as an encouraging sign.

  “Come in, Sister Beatrice, please. Do sit.” As the Mother Superior began to engage in the now-familiar genuflections necessary to engage the internal dampening field complete with ocular holographic projection and real-time data stream that she put in place whenever Esther was there, Esther settled back into a plasticene armchair. The synthetic foam that filled the cushions was soft, and the upholstery warmed almost instantly to her touch, filling her aching bruises with gentle relief. Tiny electric impulses gently massaged her lower back as she sank deeper into the chair. It wasn’t often that Esther experienced true desire for an actual physical object, but this chair ... it was changing some of that. Perhaps she would be able to request one now that she had turned the key. She had missed her own funeral services that morning in order see John (Levi!) off safely—seemed like she ought to be able compensate herself for the lost opportunity to mourn her own mortal passage.

  “I have communicated with my contacts in the Shadow Network. They are most pleased with your recent actions. The key is no more. The resulting consequences are already at play.” The Mother Superior smiled thinly at Esther. Considering that this was the first and only smile Esther had ever seen directed personally at her, despite decades of faithful, inventive service, she felt like she had really accomplished something worthwhile.

  “Thank you, Mother,” Esther said. She decided to remain silent; it was fairly clear that at this point, it was the Mother Superior’s opportunity to offer Esther the restitution of her identity and the chance to continue her training in the Mysteries of the High Tech. Esther would not even mind if she were to be transferred to another quadrant, or even sector. Her activities during the past few days had, in an odd way, boosted her confidence in her skills. Perhaps she could even seek a ship assignment. Initiates were especially valuable during interstellar voyage, when a corrupting virus or ghost could cripple an entire vessel, endangering crew and passengers alike.

  “I suspect that these initial consequences may be a cause for concern,” continued the Mother. Esther paused her internal musings. “I understand that the taking of life is a difficult choice, and yet the timeliness and efficiency with which you carried out your killings—for the first death, though unfortunate, did not deter you from continuing on to complete your mission—this single-minded dedication to obedience has won you great favor within the Shadow Network. We are in need of someone with your particular expertise.”

  Esther most definitely did not like the turn this conversation was taking. She considered speaking up, but what could she say? That the commitment and dedication being extolled right now was a lie? That wasn’t true either, for Esther was committed to the protection of the human race. She was committed to the eradication of those elements that threatened the gifts from the Conglomerate God. Her lapse with John Bucksmith had been just that—a lapse. A failure of judgment at a critical juncture. But surely the actions that followed this failure—the essential “death” of John Bucksmith on NuO, the erasure of his previous identity, the replacement of his memories, even knowing as she worked the Re-Birth to effect this replacement that doing so would erase any beginnings of confidence, any hint of trust, that had begun to develop between the two of them—surely this sacrifice was as real and as potent as any killing?

  The Mother Superior seemed to still be waiting for a response from Esther at this point. Esther bowed her head and said “Thank you, Mother.” But that was all she could get out past the knot that was forming in her chest.

  “Good. I had hoped you would continue down this Path.” Esther heard the slig
ht emphasis on the word “path” that changed it into the formalized “Path.” She was certain that she had not formally accepted a change in vocation. And yet, it was true that killing had brought a different dimension to her practice with the t’rosary. Had she somehow stumbled away from the Mysteries? Or was this simply a Path within the Mysteries?

  “Yes, Mother,” she replied. The Mother Superior seemed to be waiting for verbal affirmation from Esther. This behavior, too, was a bit odd. The default behavior ingrained in all users of the t’rosary was to avoid unnecessary speech and action that would later have to be manipulated and scrubbed before it could reach the data stacks via the Panopt.

  “This arrived for you this morning. It has been waiting for your return.” The Mother held out the last thing Esther wanted to see: a cream-colored envelope of pure paper. Esther took the envelope, its weight and texture alarmingly familiar. She flipped it over: the same seal, pressed in a thin, hardened plasticene that would shatter the minute she opened the envelope. Just like last time.

  The world seemed to slow. Esther stared at the sealed envelope in her hands. She could hear her heart beating rhythmically against her chest. Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum. The Mother Superior looked at her expectantly. Her gaze began to harden under Esther’s apparent rejection of the task she had accepted into her hands.

  Moving under their own volition, Esther’s hands fingered the envelope, flipping it over expertly, as if she handled such things regularly. Her index finger extended, slipping into the gap between the top crease and the flap. She thrust her finger across the crease, slicing the envelope open. The seal did not shatter this time.